


One Day More

by drink-glass (misterdellis)



Category: Outlast, Outlast: Whistleblower - Fandom, Whistleblower - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 12:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10100006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misterdellis/pseuds/drink-glass
Summary: Waylon escapes the asylum, but not the hell within it—he's plagued by hallucinations of violent inmates and traumatizing experiences in his own home.





	1. to paradise

**Author's Note:**

> my first outlast fic because there's not enough of these out there. here we go.

“Damnit, darling, you need to behave-!”

One more heady thrash of his body as his eyesight went dim with gray, one last ditch effort to free himself from the constriction of hastily-tied rope around his neck, and the ceiling collapsed. Waylon didn't realize this for a few life-changing seconds; all he heard was the telltale sound of squelchy meat getting impaled and the tremendous thundering of debris forming on the rotted floor and the animalistic roar of a predator in pain.

And he had yet to hit the ground. Instead of relief, Waylon felt the warm fabric of a glove turned heated by rope burn as a monstrous paw grappled for his hand. Once Gluskin’s thick bear claws for fingers closed around his smaller ones, Waylon twisted desperately in the air to face him, to jerk away from him.

The look on the brideless groom’s face, though, a look of longing and adoration that stuck to his expression and melted his icy eyes to steaming puddles, stilled Waylon. Even made him forget he was choking to death. It was like Gluskin had completely forgotten Waylon was the reason a sharp pole ran through his body, and was only envisioning how the tech would've looked in his hand-sewn wedding gown. _He probably just wants to be happy for once in his stupid life._

Waylon squeezed the patient’s hand out of pity.

A crooked smile graced purple lips, jagged teeth blue in the lighting of dawn. “We could have been beautiful,” was strangled and accompanied by a stream of blood running from Gluskin’s grimacing maw, before his wide fingers loosened around Waylon’s and allowed him to thump to the floor. Gasping for air, the smaller male scrambled to his feet, eyes blown wide and pupils dilated.

Recollected, he continued swallowing air while backing away from where he'd been hanging, gawking up at the sight overhead. Thick trunks for legs were hooked up by ropes and numbly kicking, one arm suspended high above a dangling, limp head, mouth hanging open and streaming crimson, abdomen speared through with pink-red matter gushing from its new orifice. The hand Waylon had clutched loyally earlier was now hanging, almost outstretched for the easterner.

Chips of azure for irises stared vacantly hellward, pointing nowhere in particular. 

Waylon tugged the rope from around his neck and flung it to the side. Now that he had a moment to simply _breathe_ in the middle of a gymnasium that stunk of decay and iron and piss, he took it, leaning haphazardly against the nearest wall. Everything ached and burned, his wounded leg especially, and the adrenaline was dispersing from his veins at a swift rate, allowing him to feel the full extent of his agony. He had to get out of here before he dropped dead from sheer pain or exhaustion.

So, he carried on, with one more shaky glance over his shoulder at the corpses still as statues looming above him, their maker dead in the center of them all.

Through open iron doors and wooden boards and under desks Waylon limped. He made his way to the main area of the asylum, hoping to take the stairs around the elevator to the front doors, but a trio of men in hard black armor sporting an assortment of firearms were in the way. Waylon was _this close_ to banging against the steel door that separated him from them and begging them for help, but one turned fully away from the shade he hid in to nudge at a mangled, nude body on the carpet with their shoe, and he saw Murkoff’s logo on their back.

He wasn't safe, not even now, not even from other normal human beings. He wasn't sure if he ever would be, ever again. He _was_ sure that he would get out of this hell soon, though, judging by the serene image he saw through every window of the sun kissing nearby mountaintops. A good omen, that was; he was positive of it. Murkoff wouldn't stop him now.

Radios within earshot blasted terrorized screams from teams of gun-bearers getting slaughtered by a monster underground. Waylon listened in when he could, and hid even when he couldn't, for the men still patrolling the ground floor had been given an order over their walkie talkies to shoot anything that moved. He felt like, if the gunmen didn't mow him down with bullets first, Gluskin would come back from the dead and sink a knife into Waylon’s chest the moment he turned a corner.

He'd watched the man die himself, yet still warily glanced around every wall and doorway he passed as he maneuvered around paranoid Murkoff workers, expecting to see that split, wolfish grin and hear that garbled crow of _‘darling!’_ the second he let his guard down.

But no bachelor ever sought him out, and no cannibal ever revved a saw and sprinted toward him, and Waylon landed himself in the institution’s lobby after gazing out one last window at the sunrise and watching a nearby church go up in flames without any further skirmishes. He was put off by the way the front doors stood enticingly open, by the way the area was empty of soldiers or gunfire, and shocked to see Jeremy-fucking-Blaire caved in on himself in the main doorway. A haughty final obstacle between damnation and freedom. A black silhouette against the orange of morning.

Waylon's lip curled and showed his teeth in a mixture of hostility and disgust. He had great trouble feeling emotion after being in the engine, but that serpentine face always made his chest heavy with _hatred._

“Park?” wheezed the suit, lulling his head to one side and squinting up at his ex-employee, as if delirious. He had one hand to his gut, and another clenching something behind his hip. Waylon didn't get any closer. “Well, shit. You lived. Looks like we have something in common.” He conjured up a watery smile. “Wanna’ help a fellow out? Let bygones be bygones?” _He sure loves to talk_. “Help me up, Park.” _And give orders_.

Waylon didn't. Instead, he tilted his battered body to get a look at what was in Blaire’s concealed hand, and narrowed his onyx eyes at the glint of metal. He didn't have time for this, to be stabbed; the wound in his leg could very well get infected if he didn't get it treated soon, so he had to hurry to the nearest hospice. No emotion drove him onward, not anymore; he used to push forth for Lisa. Now he just went through the steady, dangerous motions of life for the sake of surviving.

Not living. Surviving. There was a big difference.

He stalked over to Blaire. Waylon wanted to step around him; maybe he'd get out of this encounter unscathed if he rushed. Dark eyes glowered at Blaire’s false, slimy smile, and the owner of them had to narrowly lunge out of the way of an incoming blade when it shot out for his gut. Thank god he’d seen it earlier, or he would've been stabbed.

Blaire gave a feral noise as he whirled around, staggering a bit; they were both limping, they both had wounded legs. This would nearly be fair, if Blaire wasn't wielding a shard of metal and jumping Waylon again in an attempt to stick him with it. “Just fucking _die_ already!” 

But Waylon didn't want to die. He had to get his leg fixed, the logical, flat part of him said, and he had to _run run run **hide**_ the rest of him said. Waylon didn't have the chance to decide between his options; Blaire managed to down him, snarling wickedly as he straddled Waylon’s chest and waved his dagger around to punctuate every word that was spat from his tongue. “No one can know! _No one!”_

Waylon braced himself for the sharp impact of the knife in his heart, eyes squeezed shut, one hand shielding his twisted features—but death never came. He was startled into opening his eyes by the sudden howl of Blaire as he was hoisted from the ground by a mass of ebony fog. Shadowy tendrils wrapped around the executive’s limbs and caged them in place as he vainly thrashed, and an alien head and sternum materialized from the mist, insect eyes honed in on what had been caught in its inky web.

_Walrider._

And Waylon Park, once again, could only hyperventilate and stare when the suit began shuddering like he was drastically overheating. The Walrider was real. The supernatural existed. Blaire’s cries just barely registered in his mind. “Wh-?! How? How did it get out?! Fuck, help me! _Help me!_ Oh, _God,_ oh, Jesus Christ, no, _NOOOO-”_ Waylon gagged as another man's blood flooded his gaping mouth when Blaire promptly _exploded,_ strings of intestines sprawling over wood floors, a torso with a portion of its spine extending from it thudding against the receptionist desk, a cranium rolling vaguely over the carpet and hitting an oak pillar. The Walrider dissolved peacefully, abandoning the scene as if it’d never existed.

Waylon hadn't gotten any of it on film.

Unsteadily, he rose, speechless. Monsters, not including humans, existed. A German horror story resided in the ominous mountains near Leadville. He'd lived in Colorado all his life, miles away from the infamous phantom of campfire tales in Germany. 

Waylon shook himself. There was no time to dwell over what had just happened; nothing else stood between him and the vast expanse of forest beyond. He had to go.

Unless the Walrider came back.

There was no way he was just going to stand and wait for it to return so he could get blasted to bits. Leaning his weight on his good leg with each lunging step, the technician carried on, fishing his camera out from a baggy jumpsuit pocket to aim it at Blaire’s separated corpse while he went. “The Walrider is real,” he heaved, for the camcorder’s speakers. His rough voice was foreign to himself, turned to sandpaper from disuse. “It's real and it killed Jeremy Blaire.”

Sunlight kissed him lovingly, like Lisa, like Gluskin, when Waylon moved from the patio to the silent front yard. Armored vehicles littered tan cobblestone, but no soldiers stood by. Waylon was almost suspicious of the lack of activity, but the sight of a Jeep crushed his paranoia and made way for _hope._

He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt hope make his chest light. When he and Lisa had tried for a third child, and it hadn't gotten past three months of pregnancy; when he'd graduated from college and been offered a job at Murkoff; when he watched his boys hurry to the bus stop every morning with breakfast still in their mouths, tripping over their own feet in an effort to get there before they were late.

The Jeep was unlocked, and the keys were on the leather of the passenger seat. Someone must've shown up here just recently. “Sorry, guy,” Waylon muttered as he started the car, and it was an honest apology, because he was practically ditching someone here without a vehicle now. But he had to survive, not live, not feel sympathy nor empathy, and the purr of the engine vibrated his seat and sent ecstasy up his spine. Who knew he'd miss the simple noise and shaking of an aged car so much? “Thanks for the-”

A dark fog curled into existence in the courtyard. Waylon jolted as the Jeep suddenly went silent and still, and shot a hand out for the key in the ignition, twisting it and twisting it again. As he watched, blindly turning the key in its slot over and over, a figure formed in the center of the black mass, craning its head straight toward him. With a high-pitched peep of horror, Waylon found himself grappling for his camcorder on the dash with his unoccupied hand, and catching several hour-long seconds of the Walrider taking on the form of a human with fine fashion sense.

The Jeep rumbled back to life just as aphotic tentacles elongated for its front window. Waylon dropped his camera as gently as he could when so horribly panicked, and slammed a heel onto the gas pedal, lurching his stolen ride into reverse. Its rear bumper crashed through the locked gates of Mount Massive Asylum, and he spun the wheel violently so that its front faced the stretch of arched dirt road beyond.

Then, he sped away, Rorschach images burning into the backs of his eyes.


	2. visionary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> transitioning from one hospital to the next is never easy.

He'd spent so much time in that faux hospital that going to a real one was almost a reluctantly made decision. The random Jeep helped him in getting to the emergency room in only a few hours after his bizarre fear-fueled escape, and he silently thanked whoever had abandoned it there on the curb, thanked them for having no way home on wheels by leaving their keys in the car for him to steal.

Once his immediate surgery was over, and his leg was wrapped up, his ribs righted, his gashes stitched, Waylon had a nurse phone Lisa. Darling, darling Lisa. She was his one and only, and he was _his_ one and only, and maybe if she came to him and showed him what real love felt like he'd _feel_ something again.

Alas, the universe had other plans for him, it seemed.

“I met someone.”

Waylon didn't know whether he should be upset or relieved. Upset that his wife, the mother of their two gorgeous children, the thread of hope he'd clung to in the asylum, had moved on in the several months Waylon had been pronounced deceased—or relieved that she, Lisa, the love of his life, wouldn't have to deal with the new him. The damaged him.

He knew he was different already. He could see it in her eyes as she hovered anxiously beside his hospital bed, could hear it in her tone of voice, a tone that resembled how a lion tamer might attempt to coax their beast into tranquility after it'd tried to take a bite out of them.

Waylon settled on being upset. It was the normal reaction, he supposed, to his beloved’s words. His darling’s. “You thought I died, so you met someone?” The vexation he tried to push into his voice just wasn't there. He felt like a hollow shell. His knuckles were white as he gripped his bedsheets.

“No. . .” God, she still looked beautiful, even when utterly guilty. Thick brown hair, sad dark eyes, body on the plumper side. _All the more to love_ , he'd told her, time and time again. Gluskin had been disgusted by Waylon’s extra weight, told him he was heavier than he looked. Gluskin didn't understand love.

_Focus_. His wife was leaving him and he couldn't even acknowledge that. He couldn't _focus_ unless he was aiming a camera at something or skimming the ceilings for open vents to clamber into. “What happened, then?” he asked, though he really couldn't find it in himself to care. He just wanted to sleep. He just wanted her gone now that he had her back, his opinions liked to change. He was so tired.

“I met someone while you were staying at work.” The rows and rows of cheap white-walled dorms Waylon and all other lower employees stayed in had made him feel like he'd been a patient, at first. Now he knew being an actual patient was so much worse. He was supposed to be thinking about how she'd had an affair with someone while he'd been away so they could pay bills, not about living quarters. “I'm sorry.”

_It's fine_ , he almost said. That was the normal reply to when someone apologized, right? But this was different. This _wasn't_ fine. She'd cheated on him for months and hadn't stopped once he'd been admitted to a mental institution, once she was told he'd died in a fire by Murkoff. She might've even been glad that he was gone for good. He wasn't sure how to react, what was proper around other people anymore. Visions buzzed behind his eyes, freak births and mirrored monochrome images. “Get out.” Waylon thought he felt venom slide from his lips, or maybe blood, like it had when Gluskin had pummeled him through a doorway and down a hall; or when Jeremy-fucking-Blaire had imploded all over him and filled his gaping mouth with gore. Wrong; he was just tasting the tears riding the contours of his slimmed expression, turned malnourished by so little food and clean water.

Lisa apologized again, said something about the boys as she dropped a file on the bedside table, and did as she was told. Waylon combed his fingers through his black hair, squinting down at the bare blue sheets draped over his jumpsuitless frame. At least he was clean; that was the only good thing about his life, right now. No matter how hard he tried to fall asleep, he couldn't; he was tired, but his life was practically over, and sleep would solve nothing about that.

Maybe he should've just taken a nap in the asylum, and let Walker pry his head from his shoulders in the midst of his rest.

A skinny nurse with long, frizzy hair slipped into his quarters to offer him a tray of food once the sun began to set. Waylon had her put it on top of the file from Lisa, and asked her to bring him his laptop that Lisa had also gifted him. His laptop that stayed at home. Home? No, not anymore. He didn't have one of those, he decided with finality. He couldn't.

He refrained from looking up Mount Massive Asylum, because he had yet to turn in his camera to the authorities so Google would likely keep talking about how Murkoff was excelling in their research, and instead went on the news to learn about everything that'd been happening while he was gone.

Once he felt satisfied with reading up on what he'd missed in the world, the ex-tech picked at his dinner of Salisbury steak and a roll. The world around him had continued on blindly, unaware of his adventure. As Waylon cut into his meal, something that might've been emotion swelled in his chest; he'd turn in his footage of hell on earth, and all of the fake news he'd glazed over would be overcome by his story. Maybe he'd get some cash for his troubles, or even become famous, and his financial situation would be taken care of easier than he thought.

The uncovered file sat next to him, haunting. He didn't have anything else to do but read it now.

Waylon examined the papers within the aforementioned folder like he had when he'd stood in a lab, breathless, skimming over sheets that spoke of Manera refusing to eat while a buzzsaw hummed nearby.

But this had nothing to do with cannibals. _Divorce papers._ Ones he was meant to sign and return. Lisa would likely get custody of the children. Lisa would likely get the house, and the child support, and Waylon was homeless and jobless. Why would she drop all of this on him the day she visited, the day she realized he was alive, the day she realized he'd fought through some sort of Tartarus to come back to her?

“People are cruel, darling.”

Waylon’s head snapped up sharply, and his lungs stuttered like birds flapping away in tight cages when he heard that lisping voice and saw that monstrous form. The Groom, he just sat there, rope lengths in loose coils around his ankles, entrails spitting out of a hole in his gut, lips red-black with decay and allergic reactions to latex. One of his ankles was crossed over the other as he loomed, hulking, _dead,_ in a chair in the gloomiest corner of Waylon’s room. His eyes shone electric blue, reflective like a cat’s in the shade when someone held a flashlight toward it.

Waylon hammered a fist down on the assist button on his bed’s remote repeatedly, screaming for help the whole time. Gluskin just kept sitting there, quirking a brow that was half burnt off, as if unimpressed.

Waylon’s nurse rushed in several moments later, alarmed, and her wide eyes turned to saucers when she was shrieked at about the man Waylon had killed, the man seated passively in the corner. “Mister Park! Mister Park,” she cried, tumbling over to try and soothe him back into bed when he attempted to bolt out of the door she'd opened. Why did she go for him and not the gutted maniac? He didn't care about his wounded leg, or her. He'd leave her here to get mauled first if it meant he could find a hiding spot before her. Gluskin would like her more anyway. “Mister Park, please relax!”

“No! _No!_ I need to go! Let _go of me!”_ His demands melted into pleas, then guttural noises, then silence when he realized that the seat the Groom had occupied was empty—just as a group of larger nurses and doctors bolted into the room. “. . . He got away,” Waylon murmured, slumping back into his pillow. “You let him get away.” And they always came back. They even came back when he zoomed in on their suspended corpses with his camcorder and wrote about their deaths.

Everyone in the room was giving him a bewildered stare. One doctor clutched a syringe; that could've been plunged into his neck, had he struggled any longer. Waylon had seen enough needles get stabbed into his own company’s disruptive patients. “Who?” urged the frizzy-haired nurse. Her voice sounded strained. Had she been asking that for a while now?

“Eddie Gluskin.” The crowd had yet to understand. “A violent patient. A _dead_ patient. I _saw_ him die, but he was just _right there-”_ With a thin finger, he pointed viciously at the cold chair in the corner.

The doctor with the syringe squinted his pale eyes. They were blue, like Eddie’s, but without the red pools surrounding them, or the warmth of adoration. “Waylon,” he said softly, and Waylon felt himself exhale in relief at not being called ‘Park’ or ‘darling’ or ‘meat’ or ‘I’m sorry’, “you might be hallucinating.”

“No. . .” He couldn't be. He wasn't crazy like the rest of the patients at Mount Massive, he'd just seen some crazy things. Sane people didn't hallucinate. _Tired people do._ Yeah. Yeah, he was tired. Waylon righted his posture and requested some sort of medicine to help him sleep, gaze cast shamefully to the floor at his side, behind the nurse he'd been completely ready to let die. What had he become?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter will have more eddie, i promise. good job being so patient with me.


	3. adjustments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> okay. i'm sorry but this chapter had to be made to clear up way's situation; otherwise i'm sure i'd confuse some people.
> 
> also, who doesn't love a little bit more waylon?
> 
> so here's a longer chapter.

Waylon was running, footfalls hard and fast, shallow gasps of breath harder and faster. If he stopped, he was dead; if he kept going, his lungs might pop from exertion. Stubborn, the easterner kept sprinting, jittery, prey-like motions spurred on by the chattering of chains ringing together and wet heaves of air from a lipless mouth not far behind him.

He'd seen the heads and innards propped up on the random shelves decorating the asylum. He knew how he'd end up if he didn't find some way to escape his prosecutor.

But his legs were beginning to fail him. They burned, _burned,_ so badly that he could feel tears springing in his eyes. Waylon was so tired of fleeing, and yet he didn't dare attempt to stand up for himself, to fight back. The monstrosity of an ex-soldier behind him was even more powerful than Gluskin—and if Waylon couldn't even handle the groom, or a normal deformed patient, how was he meant to rise up against Walker?

“Little pig!” was roared at Waylon as he rounded a corner, and came face-to-face with a dead end. No more running. Shelves and chairs and box springs blockaded the hallway—but a vent hung wide open, heavenly, dripping blood, above the makeshift wall. With a final surge of energy, Waylon lunged for the vent, just barely snagging his wiry fingers on its edge. Groaning, he dragged himself up, up, _up,_

and yowled like a stray cat getting run over when sausage fingers locked around his bare ankle.

Waylon clawed at the blood-slick metal of the vent’s floor, scrabbling for purchase, vision spiraling in panic. He'd escaped everything else before this: the spindly scythes of a deformed self-proclaimed surgeon, the bellowing of a buzzsaw clasped in the hands of a cannibalistic anorexic, the ruthless verbal and physical abuse of an executive turned psychopath, the chilling, _horrifying_ clutches of a man that tricked himself into thinking he was in love for the sake of mutilating his significant others—

The separation of Waylon’s skull from his shoulders was a swift one, and he could see his own body tumble to the hallway floor in the dim sunlight of the break of dawn before he—

 

Waylon's own death startled him into consciousness. His chest heaved as desperately for air as it had when he'd been tied down on a gorey operating table, and he could feel tears staining his gaunt cheeks with salt.

Every single night, he died, and every single night, he came back to life crying. 

This had been going on for three weeks now; ever since his sympathetic parents had graciously paid his hospital bills and allowed for him to stay in their vacation home until he could get back on his feet, Waylon had been trapped in some sort of restless loop that he couldn't escape. He hardly even felt like he'd left Mount Massive whenever the sun fell under the mountains of Leadville.

His leg burned, streaks of fire blazing along frayed nerve endings as he tossed the scratchy sheets (which had been a blessing in the first few days here, like everything away from the asylum had been) from atop his lower body to stand up. Crutches balanced under his arms, Waylon struggled his way over to the door of the guest bedroom, and scuffled with pushing the shelf in front of it so he could exit.

It was put there nightly, out of habit.

He stuck his head warily out of the doorway once it creaked open, breath held. Sometimes he caught the sound of chains rattling like skeletal joints in the empty halls, or the wet, raspy huffs of a man with no lips to steady him, or spotted a mountainous man’s shadow closing in on him, so Waylon always blockaded his bedroom at night and kept all the hallway lights on.

No oversized, shirtless figure lurked beyond the dim space of his room. Waylon released an openly relieved exhale and limped out into the open with the aura of a frightened deer that'd just spotted a hungry wolf nearby, ambling to the kitchen. He turned every light on as he went. If he couldn't sleep, he wouldn't. Same as almost every other night.

Cereal with milk tasted like flavorless chunks of wood in water. He chewed like a cow grinding grass into paste between its teeth, staring at the wall with his crutches propped up against the stool he was slumped over on. The swirling marble of the counter he ate at was blurry; TV static in Waylon’s eyes.

The washing machine in the other room clattered and clicked and spun when it ran, and he was reminded very much of the Walrider’s droning howls as it swallowed up Blaire and spat him back out in pieces.

Waylon finished his two a.m. cereal and went to put his bowl in the sink. It was overflowing with sausage links of digestive tracts and torn livers and fingers in a clogged drain that couldn't suck down all the blood staining the stainless steel.

With a shaky inhale and a sharp step back that sent shocks of discomfort up his bad leg, the easterner tried approaching the sink again. This time, it was merely filled with dishes that he hadn't cleaned, that sort of _looked_ like something scary kudos to the red china. He put his bowl in with the rest of the unwashed dishes that he'd never rinse and dry, and hobbled away to the living room, worried that the gore would return in his vision if he examined the kitchen any longer.

Hallucinations were normal. Waylon couldn't tell if the monsters he saw were ghosts or side effects of his ruined mind at first, but he'd come to terms with the fact that he was just crazy by now. 

He saw things.

He refused to go down any staircase indoors, or take an elevator anywhere. The sound of a saw made him break down into tears. The sight of any meat made him uneasy. A man with a bald head would make him run despite his injuries. If anyone looked at him and came toward him too swiftly, Waylon tried to find a place to hide. 

He'd been removed from a grocery store for trying to bust open an air vent after an employee walked over to him to ask if he needed help shopping.

Public places and situations like that, though, were easier to deal with than the terrors Waylon faced here in his temporary home. As soon as darkness replaced sunlight in the house, he locked himself up in his room, no questions asked, for the first night spent here, he hadn't, and he'd seen Walker at the end of the hall, caught Manera’s saw buzzing in the kitchen and bathrooms, heard Gluskin humming _I Want a Girl_ through the door to the basement steps.

In his room, everything around him was quieter, at least. Sometimes a stray patient would bang on his door, and he'd see their shadow under the crack of it, and once Walker had even lumbered over, chains ringing, lungs pumping grossly, to slam a fist against its sturdy wood.

So Waylon spent the majority of his time in the evening under his bed with a barricade set in place, even though no one ever came through the door. They couldn't. They weren't real.

_They aren't real,_ he told himself repeatedly, chanting those three words in his head as he lowered his weight onto the couch and faced the small television. Nothing here could hurt him but himself. He was sane enough to know that, but insane enough to feel a cold sweat break out along his nape simply by sitting out here in the open. Vulnerable.

Nothing happened.

In fact, Waylon even managed to doze for an hour or two without any bad dreams plaguing him.

He felt more rested than ever before, despite hardly sleeping. A smile nearly plucked at the edges of Waylon’s mouth the following morning, and a slice of overcooked toast for breakfast almost tasted like toast. He could do this. He could mend himself without Gluskin’s warped perception of ‘fixing’; he could do this.

He could do this.

The day had been quiet. Rays of sun we're getting swallowed up by cerulean moonbeams wherever a window wasn't shuttered closed, like roiling sea water licking at sand and covering the shore in blue-black. Waylon’s phone gently vibrated (he couldn't handle the sound the alarm made and kept the ringer on silent at all times) on the bathroom counter as he shaved his growing beard. _PILLS,_ the screen said when he glanced its way, so he took his fistful of nightly mismatched medicine. He knew which meds were safe and which were tricks kudos to his job, so he was fine with consuming what the hospital had offered.

He had not been fine with the hospital staff recommending he enter a mental institution to cope with his traumatic experience and new hallucinations.

When he turned the television on with a wary click of the remote, static overcame its screen. Waylon sat there for a minute in the living room, watching it, and one by one, three deformed and angry-looking patients wandered over and joined him on the sofa to examine the white noise with great interest. 

His heart was in his throat, but he didn't move. 

He didn't know where they came from, and he didn't know why he stayed when they were so close to him he could _touch_ them, lazing about with arms folded and legs tossed over the sides of the couch the way they were—but nothing happened to him. And as Waylon switched the TV channels to an actual show and looked at the others for a reaction, everyone was gone.

Nothing could hurt him here but himself.

Every night, each time he woke from a nightmare, the easterner carried himself out of his locked-up bedroom, curled up in the living room, and watched _Leave it to Beaver_ reruns for a decent amount of time. If he ever saw anybody out of the corner of a purple-bagged eye, he didn't say anything to them, and despite being utterly terrified, tried not to react in general.

This carried on for around four days. Four days of meals with slowly-returning flavor; four days of showering and shaving without worrying of getting ambushed or cutting his own throat; four days of steady, albeit slim, amounts of sleep. Waylon was ecstatic. He was ready to call his parents on the fifth day and tell them about his very own improvement. Hiding had saved his life at Mount Massive; now that he had successfully escaped, now that he knew he could control his damaged mind with pills and courage, he was going to do everything _but_ hide.

Waylon was going to turn his camera into the authorities right after he called his parents tomorrow. He was going to show the world what Murkoff had done to him and all of those other patients-turned-victims. He'd been patient 2536; there were over two thousand men and women trapped in that asylum. Over two thousand men and women were dead and deformed now. Over two thousand men and women deserved to have their stories told.

Waylon was dead set on telling those stories, too, on the fifth day after he called his parents. His camera was in his hand. He was heading through the main hall of the house, but the shrill and dreamy cry of _”Darling!”_ through the basement door at his side had him frozen in his tracks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeeeere's eddie!


	4. going down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> everything goes to shit in the most unsure of ways.

Waylon dropped his crutches and bolted for the front door. 

As he broke into a sprint down the hall, Walker smashed through the bathroom door inches behind him, splinters of wood showering his back.

As he passed the kitchen entrance, Manera howled _”MEAT!”_ and revved a circular saw, his wiry form hovering over a gutted security guard on the wood floor.

As he turned a corner and stumbled into the foyer, Blaire gave a skeleton grin with red-stained teeth and extended a hand for assistance in getting to his feet.

The technician gasped desperately for air and turned back around. He had to make it to his bedroom. He had to hide. Courage meant nothing when his life was on the line.

The kitchen and hallway were both empty as he rushed back through the building, the kitchen floor free of blood, the bathroom door untouched and unopened. He didn't falter at any of these signs; alarms were blaring in his ears, haphazard red lights flashing in the asylum corridors above every locked and boarded exit.

Only Waylon _wasn't_ in the asylum. He was in his family's vacation home.

That sharp reminder didn't stop him from tripping into his room and uncharacteristically swinging the door shut behind him. He never slammed doors.

His back against its unyielding fake oak, Waylon faced a man engulfed in gray matter on the opposite side of the bed between them. This man, he was larger than Waylon height-wise, and noticeably thinner, gaunt shady eyes cut sharp and aimed at his appalled expression. For a while, they merely stared at each other. 

Then the skinnier of them lifted a hand to his own face, and scratched at the grayscale stubble decorating his jaw with only three fingers. His thin line of a mouth contorted with a judgmental smile. “You look like you've seen a ghost,” laughed the Walrider, his voice humming like a washing machine. Waylon forced himself back out of the room, his safe haven, his hiding place, when nanobots began swarming him, and faced the hallway again.

The floors were carpeted with tan rugs, the lights were dim and spots of darkness slashed across the hall where they were missing, distorted framed photos of dead executives with sloped foreheads and droopy eyes lined the peeled, chipped walls. Walker stood hunched at the opposing end of the hallway (which was suddenly much longer, punctured by rickety wooden doors with faded paint), huffing and puffing and smeared in blood. “Come here,” he slobbered, a black silhouette against the living room light, and Waylon's fingers clenched around the camera he realized he still held. “I just want to help you.”

Walker moved eerily slowly down the corridor as Waylon tried the nearest doorknob. It didn't budge, and he didn't dare ram against it, lest the ex-soldier get alarmed and charge. Next door; locked. Where was his bathroom? The other bedroom? If he glanced behind himself, his own room’s door was boarded up and rotted. Walker was nearer. “It won't hurt,” he was rasping.

What was happening? What was _happening?_ Waylon had taken his pills, hadn't he? He'd moved forward and not backward, hadn't he? He'd left the asylum, hadn't he?

Hadn't he?

A glance up proved that the ex-soldier in the hall with him was much nearer than he had been seconds earlier. Waylon gasped raggedly, blinking over to the last door within his reach that he wouldn't have to squeeze past Walker to grab at. He darted across the hall, latching onto the cold doorknob.

Wrenching the door open revealed to him a narrow staircase, barriers at either side to prevent an individual from falling. Cold air gushed skyward from the pit of shadows the steps ended in, carrying the faintest lilting tune of _I Want a Girl_ on its current. Waylon's throat clenched around a sob and silenced him; he whirled around to face the hallway again, prepared to wrestle with Walker to get away from the thing below, but there was no hallway, and the door was gone, he was in a blocked-up square room with only the stairs in the center, Dennis wielded a dull cleaver as he came toward Waylon shouting _”there he is! I told you! I told you! SHUT UP! don't talk to him that way, only I can! shut up and focus!”_

The engineer practically threw himself down the stairs in an act of desperation, tripping down the last five but making sure to shelter his camera against his stomach when he hit cold concrete. A glance up at the top of the steps showed Dennis looming there, fluorescent light reflecting off of the hairless dome of his skull, his voice low as he mumbled on about guarding his own three lives by throwing away someone else’s.

Waylon took a moment to curl in on himself in a fetal position, camcorder hugged to his chest, and cry. He cried and cried and cried. Everything he had worked so hard to overcome—hallucinations, anxiety, impulses, _the torture the insanity_ —it'd all come right back, made a full circle and trapped him in his own mind.

If this even was his own mind. Maybe he'd never left Mount Massive. Maybe this was a. . . a test from Murkoff, he was still in the engine, or he'd died and gone to hell for subjecting all those patients to what he now had to live with.

Oh, god, this must've been how all of those poor deformed people-turned-tests felt.

Waylon clutched at his hair with one hand as he rolled himself onto his knees, assessing his situation. He could, would, stay calm; as far as he knew, this wasn't real.

And if it was, so be it. He had nothing to live for now.

He was on his feet before he felt the hard stone on the soles of them. It was so much quieter down here than it was anywhere else in **_the asylum_** his house, his house, his mother’s lovely vacation home on the lake, and he had yet to spot any blemishes on humankind.

Any living ones, anyway, he observed mildly while avoiding looking at that man-turned-woman, at that headless father clasping his spouse’s hand in a knot of ropes like Gluskin had groped at his own while gutted and dangling in restraints.

Gluskin was dead. Waylon had watched his azure eyes turn gray and lightless, and had felt his fingers loosen and go limp while wound through his own.

_I Want a Girl_ played on either way.

Waylon steeled himself at every corner he turned. Moonlight filtered in through vast rectangular windows at his side, illuminating the area he stepped through and decreasing the amount of hiding spots for him to use. When he looked outside, he was faced with mountains and brick walls and barbed fences, not a rocky shore trimmed by deep emerald trees.

Every door except the one he'd seen Gluskin in so long ago was locked yet again. Waylon stood in front of the double doors for a while, trying to build up the courage to approach it.

“It's not real,” he told himself as he tried the handle, which turned dutifully. “It's not real,” he said as he pushed the door open. “It's not real,” he gasped as no giant bachelor halted his advancements, and he peered out into the lit hall.

It was empty.

Waylon’s fingers ceased their trembling as they remained locked around his camera. “It's not real.”

“What's not real, darling?”

_RUN RUN **RUN**_ shrieked his senses and red lit up behind his eyes as he made to lunge out the door and down the hall but an arm an actual arm snapped around his midsection and seized him surely against the brick wall of Eddie Gluskin’s chest.

“I frightened you again,” Gluskin observed, his tone spelling out concealed laughter and overflowing with mirth. “I'm so sorry, _again._ I shouldn't have snuck up on you like that.” Waylon was too taken aback by the fact that he could feel the arm around him and the fingers combing through his hair to even respond. “Oh, your hair is so soft. Keeping yourself nice and clean for me, aren't you, darling?”

Waylon had to find his voice and fight his own mind. His own mind. It was betraying him. This wasn't real. He could do this. “You're fake,” he croaked, nails biting into the other’s thick, clammy flesh. His captor’s _(illusion’s)_ skin was unbearably hot and it was terrifying to feel, to actually feel his imagination like it was real.

It wasn't real.

“I don't know what you're talking about, darling,” Gluskin replied, his voice screaming sincere loss. “Nevertheless, we have to get you home. You sound like you've just run a marathon.” What could home mean to a man that had parents such as his own? Waylon bucked and thrashed like a fish out of water, but Gluskin held strong. “Whoa there, dearest! Your leg hasn't fully recovered yet,” oh, he never noticed with all the adrenaline forcing him to become too jittery. “You need rest.”

It wasn't real, it wasn't real, it wasn't real, so Waylon allowed the (hallucination of a) bachelor to scoop him up. He wasn't handled like a bride, no, but like a child, with his stomach to Gluskin’s, his chin on a broad shoulder, his legs spread to dangle limply at either side of his captor’s tapered waist. One tree trunk of an arm was curled under his behind to hold him up, and the other was strapped over the backs of his shoulders, snaring him snug against the middle-aged man. Being carried any other way must've been too easy a way to wriggle out of; Gluskin wasn't stupid. Just stupid in love.

And not real.

Waylon's breathing had yet to steady. He sneered in unmasked disgust into Gluskin’s hard shoulder, which wasn't real, and dug his fingers into Gluskin's chest, which wasn't real, and stared owl-eyed at the moonlit windows and ghostly broken furniture and tarps as they passed them, which weren't real. This was all just a very vivid hallucination. A bizarre dream. A test of his sanity. He wasn't like the people Murkoff kept prisoner; he was just a guy that'd gone through a little too much.

That must've been what Walker thought as he'd been diagnosed with PTSD after leaving Vietnam; that must've been what Gluskin thought as he'd gotten bent over by his own kin and used like a silicone toy. They were both guys that’d gone through a little too much.

They were both guys that were dead, too! Waylon sucked down a sob before it clawed its way from his throat; this wasn't real.

He couldn't see where they were going, and though his thoughts ran like there was no tomorrow they might reach, Gluskin traveled at the pace of a snail. His humming vibrated against Waylon's sternum and cheek, thrumming throughout his chest as if he was an overgrown serial killer cat. Waylon was allergic to cats.

The telltale sound of Gluskin’s dress shoes colliding with wooden stairs overrode the sound of his unpleasant humming, and Waylon felt himself stiffen when he saw the basement steps pass from over a squared shoulder. Gluskin’s grin was evident in his words when he piped up. “I did tell you I was taking you home, didn't I?”

Waylon felt like he might throw up. Saliva built up in his mouth and he swallowed it over and over in his effort to keep his breakfast down. They were going upstairs, with all the monsters. Gluskin couldn't handle the Walrider, Walker, Manera, and every other variant on top of that—not that Waylon wouldn't mind escaping Gluskin if he died, _again_ seeing as he wasn't _real,_ but if he could feel the groom, wouldn't that mean he could feel Walker when the monster tried to take his head off, or Manera when the cannibal drove a spinning saw into his gut?

“Wait,” Waylon tried, desperate not to enter the ground floor of the asylum, unsure of whether he was having a nightmare or burning in hell or simply crazy, certain that he was still a coward after all that he'd experienced, “it's not safe up there-!”

“Nonsense!” Gluskin was as curt and loud as a barking hound. “You're safe with me, darling. I'd never let anything happen to you.”

Waylon swallowed down a snarky remark he would've howled at his company had he not known that he could apparently touch his own visions, and instead yelped when the basement door opened with the touch of his back pushing against it. “I'm so glad you finally came down to visit me, darling,” Gluskin continued as he curved out into the hall of Waylon's family vacation home, not the asylum, it’d never been an asylum. “So glad you've finally given me permission to come _up_ to visit _you.”_

The easterner’s adrenaline turned to ice in his veins, much heavier than any liquid he'd ever housed in his body, and he hardly knew why. Maybe it was the squeeze of not-real arms around him; maybe it was the faint weight of a brass doorknob in his hand. “I didn't,” was susurrated as his bedroom entrance was made visible over Gluskin’s shoulder. So the man knew where he slept now. Not that this was troubling, because he wasn't real, but the realization still sent Waylon’s skin to prickling. “I didn't give you permission to visit me.”

“Well, I didn't actually need it,” Gluskin said coolly, cutting him a dull look with silvery eyes that should've been gray, should've been lightless. “I was being polite. You need to work on your politeness, darling.”

The touch of his mattress against his jeans as he sat down was uncomfortable. Gluskin pried his camera away, set it on the bedside table, reached for Waylon’s shirt and undid every button, but Waylon swore he felt his own fingers working them loose. He didn't respond to Gluskin’s lowbrow taunt, and his lack of speaking carved a line between the _dead_ patient’s eyebrows. “This is exactly what I'm talking about. I'll have to teach you how to handle a man.” His bearclaw fingers worked Waylon out of his pants, or maybe Waylon’s own thin hands did. Either way, he didn't struggle. Nothing was certain, not even when he told himself this wasn't real over and over and over and over.

Waylon relaxed into bed despite facing the horror that was currently his life. Gluskin’s features smoothed out into something pleased, and he tucked Waylon in, but Waylon could've sworn he'd done it himself and it just _looked_ like Gluskin had. Had he carried himself around in his own basement, too? Had he stopped himself from running away from himself? Had he eaten today? Had he spoken to his parents? Where had he gone wrong?

Gluskin beamed at him, a nightmarish figure standing black against the barely-setting sun of the window behind him. “I'll let you sleep alone, for now,” he purred dreamily. “I know how a lady must want to protect her innocence. We'll reunite in the morning, my love.”

Waylon didn't see him leave, but Gluskin was gone, and the sickly man didn't dare leave his bed nor get a mere moment of rest. Whatever was happening, he was certain sleep wouldn't save him from it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you're happy now that our son is more paranoid than usual,,,


End file.
